Fall TV: Superheroes, strong women – and Manson?

Cincinnati native Charles Manson, the infamous cult leader whose followers killed actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969, will be the subject of a new NBC drama in the 2014-15 TV season announced last week.

"Aquarius," a mid-season show, stars David Duchovny ("The X-Files," "Californication") as a 1967 Los Angeles police officer whose hunt for a missing teen-age girl takes him "down a rabbit hole of drugs, sex, murder and cultural revolution," NBC says. The show "will explore the cat-and-mouse game between (Manson) and the police that will go on for several seasons, ultimately ending with the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders."

Unless NBC cancels the show, as it did last week to "Revolution," "Community, "Believe" and the Michael J. Fox and Sean Hayes sitcoms.

(Photo: AP Photos)

No word yet on who will play Manson, 79, born in Cincinnati on Nov. 12, 1934. He's serving a life sentence in a California prison.

The new TV season could be the best for strong roles by African-American women: Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (in Fox's "Red Band Society"), Alfre Woodard as U.S. president (in Katherine Heigl's "State of Affairs" on NBC) amd CCH Pounder (CBS' "NCIS: New Orleans" spinoff) in addition to Smith and Davis.